


Corat

by anonymouST (anonymo_su)



Series: Nerys [2]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alcohol, Dominion War, Enemies to... Something That's Not Quite Enemies, Episode: s07e25 What You Leave Behind, Gen, Redemption, Swearing, a healthy dose of animosity throughout, passing mention of Bajoran Resistance characters, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymo_su/pseuds/anonymouST
Summary: Part of a series of short Kira-centric fics, in which the common thread is the use of the name 'Nerys'.Kira and Damar, no longer enemies but not friends either, hiding in Mila's basement at a point where they've almost lost all hope of winning. Kanar hangovers, the word 'sorry', and the question of Cardassian redemption. (partially a meta post in fic form)Plus a bonus scene with Kira and Garak immediately after the end of the war.
Relationships: Kira Nerys & Damar, Kira Nerys & Elim Garak
Series: Nerys [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1639936
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Corat

**Author's Note:**

> Not as much re: Ziyal here as I'd hoped, but I want to do more with her (actually featuring her in person!) for future fics in this series.

Strange drink, kanar. It had been her first ever taste of alcohol, back in the Resistance. They'd raided a convoy for supplies, and come back with enough food and drink for months. Shakaar had called a small feast to celebrate; the food laid out on the tables had been more than she'd seen in a lifetime. And the drink! She'd been curious, but she was young. _How_ young was hard to say, given how old she'd forced herself to feel, but she couldn't have been more than, say, 17 or 18? Regardless, Lupaza thought she was old enough to try at least a little, and so she'd watched as the drink was poured into her small ceramic cup.

Nerys' first sip had been a bitter one, naturally – embarrassingly, half of it ended up spluttered right back in the cup, and she could hardly swallow the rest. There'd been laughs, which she'd _hated_ , and she'd endeavoured to drink the rest to prove her own hardiness. Prove it she had, and she'd felt proud and tough and very grown-up on top of that pleasant warm buzz.

Alcohol tended to give her the giggles, as she found out from that night on. She really preferred the sweet warmth of springwine, and there'd been plenty more of it since the Cardassians had left, but kanar – despite its harshness – would get the job done.

Last night, bitter kanar had been their only option. Here she was, supporting a very different resistance, drinking _with_ Cardassians instead of in defiance of them. And so, as she unfortunately opened her eyes, thoughts of her strange new reality were what accompanied the unwelcome pounding in her head.

From the looks of it, Garak was one hell of a sleepy drunk. He'd slumped over and checked out of the kanarfest early, when she and Damar had barely started. The night had passed and, with dim light and sore eyes, Kira could see him lying exactly where he'd been.

 _Garak, a lightweight?_ It was an amusing thought. _Is that why they kicked you out of the Obsidian Order? I guess it's better than letting all your secrets slip. Just better not talk in your sleep._

Damar, on the other hand... she'd spied on him during DS9's occupation, seen him in Quark's more often than not, and witnessed drunken moods from chatty to angry to miserable. The way they were right now, the last of those three was turning out to be easiest to feel, and the heavy gloom had weighed down on her too. Hard to feel anything else, cooped up in a basement all day and all night, consistent reminders coming through onscreen of just how fucked they were.

Looked like Damar was still asleep too. She was kinda hoping he wouldn't wake up for a while. While he made a decent enough companion for wallowing in misery, her hangover was something she'd rather not share.

And sharing it with _him..._

They'd been allies of convienience rather than choice. She might admit that he was better than he used to be, but the bad blood _really_ hadn't healed. Before this, back when they felt they had a chance, they'd (mostly) held themselves back in the silent knowledge that neither could afford to puncture their thin alliance. But now, and _hungover..._.

Garak seemed to have the most restraint of the three. With any luck, she thought, he'd be waking up next.

She spent some time with her eyes closed. Might've been minutes, might've been hours, and _all_ time felt like too damn long with this headache. But she persisted – maybe she could dodge having to face another day by faking sleep the entire time. Waking or sleeping, she'd achieve about as much from it either way.

Or she could get up, _quietly_ , and drink some water. Make the headache a little less overwhelming. And maybe then she could get back to sleep, real or fake.

It took a while to get herself up, but she got up, lifting herself off the bench on which she'd been lying on her side. It had left her a dozen little aches all throughout her body, all of which kicked in harder as she went. Cardassians really weren't ones for comfort, huh.

She'd slept worse in her time. She'd live. For maybe a few days longer.

Mila would bring them buckets of water in the cellar, which had had to suffice for all their needs. Kira crept across to yesterday's water, _hoping_ that she'd remember – in this state and this light – which one was drinking water and which one they'd been using to wash with.

Groans from across the room as she reached the buckets. Garak was still fast asleep, which meant... she just couldn't be lucky these days, could she.

"Kira," Damar said, self-evidently.

"Good morning." She loaded the statement with blunt irony. Kira dipped a small tumbler into the drinking bucket, then knocked the water back like yet another shot.

He was blissfully silent as she had a little more water, sipped slowly this time. Once done, she replaced her empty tumbler, then made her way back to the bench that now formed her territory. All the while, Damar seemed to be having as much trouble waking up as she'd had, and took his sweet time to even go from his back to a sitting position at the bench across the table from her.

Garak, slumped in a chair at the head of the table, still showed no signs of moving. _So much for the ever-present Obsidian Order._

"Kira." It was Damar again, and he wouldn't meet her eye. "I want to tell you something."

Oh, _really._ Here he was, on the verge of finally letting something slip through the cracks of his tough Cardassian armour (which he'd slept in, she noticed – how comfortable), and he'd picked a time when they were both hungover and hopeless. Perfect.

"Just say it, Damar."

"I..." And a _long_ pause. Great start, Damar. Good job. What an enthralling conversation this was going to be.

He finished saying it. "I killed Ziyal."

"Yes. I know." _And your point?_

"And... I'm sorry." A sorry Cardassian. What a sight. He still couldn't look her in the eye, but it looked like he meant it – there was a clear shame that came with that kind of honesty.

Well, he deserved that shame. And she wasn't clamouring for a ticket to the Damar pity party.

"Why tell me this? Why? Do you want me to say I forgive you, that it's all okay now? Because I don't, and it certainly is not!"

"No." Now it looked like he was regretting bringing it up. Ugh, she probably could've been more tactful, but what did he _expect_ bringing it up now?

"I wanted... to..." Damn, his voice was hoarse. He probably needed water too. "You reminded me, about the kind of people who give orders to kill innocent women and children... and I remembered. And I'm sorry."

As bad a mood as she might've been in, she was still blindsided by the word 'sorry' from a Cardassian soldier's mouth. Even if it sounded like he was choking on every word. "You're not very good at talking about this, are you."

He almost recoiled at _that_. Dammit, she hadn't meant it as an insult!

So she followed up. "Well, it _isn't_ easy to talk about. We go our whole lives thinking we're right, and when we see that we're wrong? It's like... like our whole lives have come down, and we have to build them back up."

He was nodding now, slow, guarded. Alright. You've got him back, Kira. You can do this. Can maybe help him on the path to being a semi-decent person, Prophets willing.

He spoke again: "When I heard that they'd killed my family..." A little anger seeping in there. She certainly knew _that_ tone. But he couldn't keep it up, couldn't even keep the sentence going, because all the other feelings there wouldn't let his feelings be as simple as just anger.

He'd probably never even thought about things like this before, never had a reason to until it happened to him. She'd heard about an ancient Earth myth – probably from Bashir not shutting up – about a box that contained all the bad things in the world. Open it up and it _all_ comes rushing out at once.

(Bajorans didn't have any myth like that, not that she'd heard. All the bad things in the world were already too busy happening.)

No closing that box when it was opened. "Yeah. Well, Ziyal was family to me."

"And to Dukat." Without changing tone or skipping a beat, as if she and Dukat were in any way equivalent.

_Really?_

"Oh, leave him out of it."

"Why? She was his daughter." Hints of outrage.

Fuck it, she wouldn't hold back for him. This was _absurd._ "Damar, do you see him having the same epiphanies as you over her death? Do you see him leading a fleet against you, or the Dominion, or _any_ of the people responsible here? Who knows what he's up to right now, but it's not that. That man won't lift a finger to stop all this killing."

Damar's eyes burned in silent for a good ten seconds. He cooled, breathed, looked down, absorbed it. Needed to keep on thinking.

"Some people feel these things, and it makes them realise: oh shit, _I've_ made people feel that way." She nods in his direction: "Like you did. And then they stop, and they decide to be better than that." And then, trying to hide her rising frustration: "But, you know, some people just _don't._ Some people spend their lives as hypocrites, or get too caught up in their own damn ego, or... whatever. And they _don't_ realise that about other people, or maybe they just _don't care._ "

She took a deep breath in. Looked up to the unlit ceiling, and down again. "I don't think I've seen Dukat do a thing in his life that wasn't for the sake of his own ego. Maybe taking in Ziyal, but you don't deserve credit for deciding, oh hey, I'm _not_ gonna kill this person after all. Like, what do you want, a medal?"

Damar was staring at her inscrutably. She could rant about Dukat for days, and Prophets knew she needed to, but she needed to stay on track here. Couldn't introduce _too_ many lofty moral concepts in one go.

"The point is, some people just _don't_ change. They just keep on doing the same old bullshit they always did, and won't have their minds changed by anything – and that's why we have to fight." She nodded over at him. "But sometimes, people change. You did. And that's why you're fighting with _us._ "

It probably wasn't, to be honest. Knowing Cardassian soldiers... most likely the Dominion had bruised his ego, so he'd struck out on his own. But hey, if she acted like he was a good person for it, maybe he'd _listen._

And whatever had brought him here, this was where he'd ended up. They had to make the most of it, not so much for Damar's sake, but for the sake of a Cardassia that learned from its mistakes and never, _never_ did this again. Just like Garak had said. If they ever got out of this, even made it through alive, then this was what every Cardassian on the planet needed to hear and know and live by.

If Damar as a person got something out of it as well? Sure. Why not.

Yeah, this was still a lot for him to take in. The guy was shaking his head now. "Skrain was good to me. He got me to where I am. So I can't dismiss him as easily as you do."

It took her a second to realise who he was talking about. "I forgot that was his name. He was always Gul Dukat to us. You don't get on a given name basis by keeping people in camps."

"What if you're hiding in a cellar with them? Do you get to use given names then?" Was he smiling? The bastard probably thought he was flirting.

"I don't even _know_ your given name, I'm hardly gonna _use_ it."

"It's Corat." With a very stern, very Cardassian pride: "Legate Corat Damar."

 _That wasn't an invitation to tell me,_ Kira thought, _but okay._

"Any chance you could get me some water, Nerys?" Yeah, he _did_ think he was flirting, didn't he. The way he said her given name was nothing like how Dukat said it – and thank the Prophets for that – but his voice was too laughably dry to be smooth.

She said nothing. She went back over to the water buckets, took the drinking tumbler and refilled it... then tipped her head back and drank the whole thing in one go.

 _"Nerys."_ Okay, now he could _really_ stop saying that name.

"Don't push your luck, _Damar._ You can get your own water. Or do you want the water from the wash bucket?" And with that, she returned to her bench.

For a moment, it looked like he might stay right where he was out of spite. He gave up on that, though, and finally made his move – pointedly not looking at her all the while.

 _Good,_ Nerys thought. _He knows when he's beaten._

All three of them were beaten, though, weren't they? Cowering in this basement, nothing but a floor and an old housekeeper protecting them from the Dominion. Chances were, everything she'd just said would be useless when their rebellion of three was found and destroyed.

But that didn't make it not worth saying. She pushed back against the gloom and the headache to remind herself of that. She would never, _could_ never, accept defeat.

* * *

They'd gone back afterwards, to find Damar's body. It could so easily be meaningless, given how many millions of corpses the Dominion had left for Cardassia, but they'd both agreed that they wanted to find his. Maybe the meaninglessness was something they had to fight and battle through, for the sake of finding some sense in all the slaughter – for Garak in particular, who'd have to live with this.

There he was, barely a few hours dead. All of them were. One body among many, and outside the building, more still.

"Legate Corat Damar," Garak echoed when they found him. "Look what's become of you."

His voice, despite its expressive tone, expressed precisely nothing of how he felt to see Damar there. Kira suspected he'd have it no other way.

"So much for leading Cardassia," she quietly observed.

Kira remembered something about Cardassian funeral rites, that it dishonoured the dead for a non-Cardassian to see the body. Here she was by Garak's side, and he'd said nothing about that. Gave nothing away in his face or his voice. Maybe Garak had little regard for that, maybe he'd accepted the 'dishonour' as inevitable... or maybe being here and seeing the bodies was a closure he'd allowed her, just between the two of them.

"He led them far enough," Garak countered. "He played the role Cardassia needed from him, and then died before he could teach it the next stage of what he'd learned. A shame. And thanks to the Dominion's cruelty, no children continue his legacy. Damar's sacrifice for Cardassia ends here."

"Hell of an obituary," she said dryly.

"If I was writing one, I'd add what a magnificent proof of concept he turned out to be. It seems even our former leader could learn the word 'sorry'."

"You—" The initial reaction was surprise, followed by the internal acknowledgement that she should probably have seen that coming. "You were listening." Like he'd never known how to _stop_ being a spy.

"Always." He stepped onwards, making his way past the other fallen bodies. "Ever onwards, Commander. Out to the city. No doubt there'll be a burial team later."

She followed him out, leaving these ones behind them.


End file.
